19.05 - Day 125 - Bridgehampton to New York
Sunday May 19th - Bridgehampton, New York - New York City, New York (Day 125)
After an early morning solo walk into town and back I pop out with Jamie with coffee in hand to walk Lily. There’s geese, turkeys and rabbits around which Lily is on the lookout for, and some deer too which I’d spotted earlier before they skipped off into the woodland. And like everywhere we’ve been there’s grey squirrels aplenty - the only place this was different was Canadian Niagara Falls where they were noticeably blacker.
Having sprawled our stuff around Jamie's house it’s now time to pack it all up and load up our car for the final time. A 90 minute drive leads to our final charging station where we have to queue for the first time albeit just for a couple of minutes in the car park of a shopping centre. Returning the car to Hertz is a significant milestone for us, but for the bored staff it’s just one more return amongst hundreds a day.
Including the cut-short first drive to Vegas we have driven 4,996 miles in our five weeks. Indeed apart from the first failed charge it’s been smooth sailing. Only between the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon via Zion did we have to go out of our way by 30 minutes to charge.
Besides that there’s always been superchargers easily in reach, the onboard screen accurately predicting range and drive times. It’s certainly made us believe our next car could be an EV, the quiet drive, the smooth acceleration with no gears making it an appealing proposition.
I kept a note of each drive and charge (obviously) and it appears our 3 year old rental car with 50,000 miles achieved about 260 miles on a full charge (415 km) which would easily cover almost all our usual driving. It cost us $340 (AUS$510) for all our charges and I reckon our Tiguan would have cost $690 (AUS$1,040) at $3.50/gallon which seemed about the normal US price.
From the quiet of Bridgehampton we plunge into the busyness of New York via the AirTrain and subway - helpful staff getting us set up with weekly passes including saying Seb doesn’t need a ticket which sees him ducking under the turnstyles like a fare dodger for the next seven days.
Our hotel is a short walk from the subway, near Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. The kids are excited, Seb especially, to find a games room with table football and table tennis, which serve well as a bargain chip for his schoolwork.
After a brief rest we walk west to the waterfront, blue skies above us and jump on the Ikea Ferry, a free service on weekends to encourage locals to visit the blue and yellow warehouse in Brooklyn, but for us - a 25 minute each way round trip - serves up the famous Manhattan skyline.
Walking back up to our hotel we're amongst the exiting crowds from Game 7 of the NBA finals of the Eastern Conference. Hard to tell the Knicks had actually lost the decider, especially when the Hoop Bus - a yellow school bus with basketball hoop attached to the front stops outside Panda Express where we’re eating dinner, effectively shutting down the street for impromptu 1-on-1’s. And with that and perhaps some more table football we’re done.